Masculinity in Transition

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Locating the roots of toxic masculinity and finding its displacement in unruly culture

Masculinity in Transition analyzes shifting relationships to masculinity in canonical works of twentieth-century literature and film, as well as in twenty-first-century media, performance, and transgender poetics. Focusing on toxic masculinity, which has assumed new valence since 2016, K. Allison Hammer traces its roots to a complex set of ideologies embedded in the histories of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and political fraternity, and finds that while toxic strains of masculinity are mainly associated with straight, white men, trans* and queer masculinities often reiterate similar patterns of behavior.

Hammer argues, however, that these malignant forms of masculinity are not fixed and can be displaced by unruly alliancestexts and relationships that reject the nationalisms and gender politics of white male hegemony and perform an urgently needed reimagining of what it means to be masculine. Locating these unruly alliances in the writings, performances, and films of butch lesbians, gay men, cisgender femmes, and trans* and nonbinary individuals, Masculinity in Transition works through an archive of works of performance art, trans poetics, Western films and streaming media, global creative responses to HIV/AIDS, and working-class and white trash fictions about labor and unionization.

Masculinity in Transition moves the study of masculinity away from an overriding preoccupation with cisgenderedness, whiteness, and heteronormativity, and toward a wider and more generative range of embodiments, identifications, and ideologies. Hammers bold rethinking of masculinity and its potentially toxic effects lays bare the underlying fragility of normative masculinity.

Reviews

"A major intervention into masculinities studies, Masculinity in Transition brilliantly and consistently pushes the field toward a critical understanding of masculinity as a complex gender formation. K. Allison Hammer undertakes nuanced readings of a wide array of texts to offer a new understanding of masculinity and the ways in which it both serves and subverts hegemonic social, sexual, and racial hierarchies."Christopher Breu, author of Hard-Boiled Masculinities

Author Bio

K. Allison Hammer is senior lecturer in gender and sexuality studies at Vanderbilt University.